A drawing of Archimedes (?287-212 BC) of Syracuse by an anonymous artist in 1810. The story as told here by Vitruvius does not appear in any of the great philosopher’s own extant writings, though of course these must constitute only a small part of what he wrote. This has prompted some (including Galileo Galilei) to ingenious reconstructions of his possible experimental method using his surviving treatise On Floating Bodies. That said, Vitruvius’s version is sound enough, and in case what is remarkable is that Archimedes experimented at all, exhibiting the purposeful Observation, Analogy, Experiment that Sir Humphrey Davy regarded as a defining characteristic of a much later age of discovery.
Introduction
Hiero II (?308 BC – 215 BC), ruler of Syracuse in Sicily (an ancient Greek colony), made a present of a golden crown to a temple in honour of the gods. The crown was commissioned and duly delivered, but Hiero suspected that the craftsman had kept some of the gold and mixed in some lesser metal. So he turned to a relative of his, the mathematican Archimedes, and asked him to do some detective work.
A CHARGE was made that gold had been abstracted, and an equivalent weight of silver had been added in the manufacture of the crown. Hiero, thinking it an outrage that he had been tricked, and yet not knowing how to detect the theft, requested Archimedes to consider the matter. The latter, while the case was still on his mind, happened to go to the bath, and on getting into a tub observed that the more his body sank into it the more water ran out over the tub. As this pointed out the way to explain the case in question, without a moment’s delay, and transported with joy, he jumped out of the tub and rushed home naked, crying with a loud voice that he had found what he was seeking; for as he ran he shouted repeatedly in Greek, “eureka, eureka!”*
Taking this as the beginning of his discovery, it is said that he made two masses of the same weight as the crown, one of gold and the other of silver. After making them, he filled a large vessel with water to the very brim, and dropped the mass of silver into it.
In Greek, εὖρηκα, “I have found [it]”. A modern Greek would pronounce this EV-ree-ka. In English it is pronounced yoo-REE-ka.
Précis
In the third century BC, Hiero, ruler of Syracuse, commissioned a golden crown for a votive offering. Suspecting the goldsmith of adulterating the gold with silver, he asked Archimedes to prove it. While taking a bath, Archimedes suddenly saw his way and shouting ‘Eureka! I’ve got it’ he bounded away home to experiment with a water tub. (57 / 60 words)
In the third century BC, Hiero, ruler of Syracuse, commissioned a golden crown for a votive offering. Suspecting the goldsmith of adulterating the gold with silver, he asked Archimedes to prove it. While taking a bath, Archimedes suddenly saw his way and shouting ‘Eureka! I’ve got it’ he bounded away home to experiment with a water tub.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 60 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 50 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: because, despite, if, just, since, unless, until, who.
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